


Beyond 8000 Worlds

by Xairathan



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: F/F, Godking, That's their ship name I declare it to be so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 06:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21094910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: Hell and Eternity are empty, and both their devils are here.





	Beyond 8000 Worlds

Hell itself didn’t want her.

That’s the only reason Nobunaga can think of as she runs through Honnouji. The fire at her feet flares up and squirms over her skin, but leaves no marks. Two warped and twisting lines across her stomach and chest are the only signs of its touch. Beneath her skin, her flesh sings with vibrant agony. Her body should be covered in blisters; Nobunaga understands: Hell spat her out with this body, and in exchange it’ll haunt her soul.

Honnouji shifts around her, a foreboding groan ever rising in pitch. It’ll come down soon, and if Nobunaga is still within its bounds when it does, it’ll crush her regardless of what the fire does.

With an easterly shift of the wind, the flames tell Nobunaga where to go: a gaping section of temple; a hole eaten in the compound wall. Nobunaga leaps through without hesitation to the surprised cries of a handful of soldiers. They obviously weren’t expecting anyone. Nobunaga wouldn’t have either, with the heat of the fire pounding at her back even as she rolls clear of the crumbled stone.

A roar of flickering orange voices itself in tongues over her head. Her hands lift into the air; sparks fly up to meet them. A soaring in her chest, a victorious concert of screams and crackling familiar to her ears. She’s heard this song before. It’s the melody of Mt. Hiei, the threefold symphony of Nagashima. The soldiers in front of her are men one moment, drifting clouds of soot the next.

Nobunaga steps callously in the ashes as she runs for the edge of Kyoto.

At one of the many bridges overlooking the river, a pause. A sullen quiet lingers over this place, the clamor of alarm bells muted by the gentle rush of the river in an unbroken murmuring. It’s here that Nobunaga realizes the world feels different. It’s more distant; she peers down over the side to check if there might be souls in the river and if Hell, in fact, is a facsimile of Kyoto.

Nobunaga’s inquisitive gaze is met by a demon.

Red eyes, red hair; a billowing cape that boasts rays of gold angled over one shoulder. Nobunaga lifts a hand, and so does the demon. A tumbling of warmth in her stomach reminds her. The only Hell to be found in the river is embodied in her.

In the distance, a crashing accompanied by a jet of flame thrown skyward. Honnouji calls to Nobunaga as it falls, reminding Nobunaga to run. Mitsuhide will be looking for her body when the rubble settles.

With a toss of her cape, flowing like blood from a wound, Nobunaga sets herself towards the hills.

It’s easy to disappear in the forest. Nobunaga reminds herself of this every time she sets foot in one. Okehazama is her claim, tested and proved every time. You can lose an entire army among the trees, and yet Nobunaga feels as if she’s not alone. She’s not yet fully free of the fire that forged this body: each step is pain revisited, and in each crackle of leaves beneath her heels is the silent sound of ground being lost. Nobunaga alone is aware of it: she knows well what the tides of war feel like to know when a current is bearing her out to deeper waters.

As if to vindicate her, as though to chide her that knowledge isn’t everything, a blackened blade flies out at Nobunaga from the shadows between the trees. Nobunaga twists to the side, and it passes over her, though near enough for her to see the streak of color along the length of the tang. It’s not blood, but rather stylistic. The metal is still pristine, the only scratches on its surface the ones from its forging.

At the end of the blade, a blur of crimson and gold. Its wielder spins behind a tree and seemingly vanishes. Not even a whisper of tumbling leaves betrays a hint of movement. Nobunaga stays where she is, arms held out wide. Embers dance into being at the tips of her fingers, unfurling with the laughter that rolls from her tongue.

Into the darkness: “Did my retainer send you, too?” Nobunaga’s eyes burn through the seamless panorama of trees and shrubs. She could let her wrist tilt and set the forest alight, but a second fire would no doubt draw Mitsuhide’s eyes to the east. “Or do you simply have an ironic sense of timing?”

A perfect stillness settles over the moment. A shadow obscures the moon; no cloud, but a woman. Her short hair and long scarf are outlined in silver as she plunges at Nobunaga from above, sword already swinging.

Nobunaga brings both her hands in front of her face, not to shield herself, but to strike. She means to lash out with fire, but it has other ideas. A burst of radiance, and black and red is answered in kind. A long katana settles itself comfortably in Nobunaga’s grip. She’s never seen this blade before, and yet it fits against her palm as if it was made for her. Where the enemy swordsman’s tang is tinted, Nobunaga’s blade is empty, hollowed out, an unspoken truth. Hell is empty, and it resides in Nobunaga.

Their swords meet with a ringing clatter; the other woman lands lightly on her feet, springing back as soon as she’s touched down. Now in the moonlight, Nobunaga sees the unearthly gold of her eyes. The grin that’s settled on her face widens, and she beckons to her foe with an outstretched hand.

“You certainly aren’t any human, with a face like that. What are you?” A moment of hesitation from the other: the slightest dip of her blade. Nobunaga can’t help but chortle. Her mirth rolls like thunder against the smoky underbelly of the sky. “What’s this? Are you tongue-tied, now that you’re in the presence of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven?”

Something changes in the other’s eyes. Nobunaga’s seen this glimmer before: the madness of men driven by fanaticism, the declaration of the intent to fight to the death.

But behind that, another sensation. Nobunaga’s attacker regards her with the curiosity a killer with her sureness should have quelled long ago. It’s at this opening that Nobunaga strikes, angling her shoulder so the shine of the moon splashes in her opponent’s eyes. She flinches; Nobunaga lunges, and the end of her sword emerges into the air freshly coated in dripping warmth. She doesn’t strike to kill: Nobunaga knows her weakness, and grips the other woman’s sword hand to prevent a retaliatory strike that never comes. With a gasp, the light-haired woman sinks against Nobunaga, clinging to whatever she can hold. Forgotten is her sword, slipping from numb fingers to dissipate in a smoky haze of gold.

The moment stretches painfully on. Nobunaga’s gaze can’t help but wander downwards. Her opponent wears no armor; Nobunaga can see her unblemished skin, slender fingers, a shadow of a line where the string of her bracers digs too hard into her wrist. Every movement in their fight had suggested expertise; the shudder of the woman’s breathing screams of inexperience. Eyes squeezed shut, she shakes uncontrollably in Nobunaga’s arms. No tears emerge— she’s just in shock.

Nobunaga steps back, her sword coming free with the motion. The woman collapses to her knees, a hand pressed to the bloody wound in her side. Her scarf muffles the sound of her gasps enough for Nobunaga to hear the forest coming to life around them. Running feet, carrying shouts. Mitsuhide’s discovered her escape, or at least is covering his bases. A quick look back down— this swordsman won’t be any help if there’s a fight to come. She can’t handle the most basic of wounds, and would likely try to kill Nobunaga again if she cauterized it. Better to let her bleed, so long as she isn’t found.

“Do yourself a favor.” Nobunaga tries what her counterpart did, dropping her sword. Rather than golden mist, it withers away in a trail of singed embers and ash. “Don’t come after me again.”

The swordsman on the ground doesn’t so much as grunt. Nobunaga shrugs her cape back over her shoulders and departs into the forest, effortlessly running towards the river. A quick blaze will draw the attention of Mitsuhide’s troops away from the hills; the river will provide an escape. From there, Hideyoshi will be to the south, and that’s where she’ll set her course.

First, she must escape Kyoto. Nobunaga plunges towards the riverbank, tearing through the trees, quick as fire. When she reaches the rocks, she doesn’t hesitate: a spark from her hands sets the timber alight. She’s plunging into the water as soon as it’s caught, letting it carry her away from the rising pillar of smoke. With her vanishes her trail, and any proof that Oda Nobunaga was here.

There is proof to be found higher up in the forest, where no one will think to look. Nobunaga lets her mind wander back to the lone assassin. A hint of amusement curls her lips: such surety is a trait to be admired, but what of the naivety that had accompanied it? Only campaigns and strategy have intrigued her in such a way before. There’s more to that woman; Nobunaga knows it, as much reason to wonder who’d sent her as much as to concern herself with her. After all, what kind of warrior would abandon themselves to the mercy of an opponent after only one blow?

This, and one other thought, occupy Nobunaga’s mind as she lets herself float down the river. When she emerges from the water at the edge of the city, she’ll have come to a decision. If the Hell she was supposed to be condemned to has joined her as well, who is she to deny it? She might as well capitalize on the advantage.

As the moon sets, Mitsuhide’s men scour the riverbank in vain. A certain swordsman gets to her feet and limps towards the heart of Kyoto, tracing an unseen path. A woman with red hair swims towards the edge of the river and dries herself in an instant before heading towards the main road. She is not Nobunaga— she is remade; she is Maou. A rebirth in fire and water.

* * *

She reunites with Hideyoshi, of all places, at Nagoya Castle. Maou doesn’t question the fortuitousness; Hideyoshi doesn’t question Maou’s new armor. It’s black and tight-fitting: plates on fabric on skin. A single well-placed hit would leave bruises at the least, and more likely, broken bones. It speaks as much to Maou’s confidence as it does her fashion taste. The armor is equal parts intimidation and challenge: come attack me, if you think you can.

Her sudden increase in height and the shrouding of her features in red go unspoken. The first thing you learn serving under Nobunaga’s command— her eccentricities are as boundless as her luck.

Mitsuhide has not yet left Kyoto. Whether he’s biding his time or simply unused to the burdens of his new command, it’s unclear. What matters: that word of Oda Nobunaga’s death is spreading rapidly. Maou refuses to let a lifetime’s work be undone by an incompetent traitor in a single night.

Maou greets the hall leading to her private quarters with an anticipatory smile. She hasn’t been here for many years; she’ll be sure to fully appreciate her return once the plan she’s made with Hideyoshi sees fruition. A full day to let the men rest from the quick march Hideyoshi’s maintained for half a week, and then it’s off towards Kyoto.

A roll of Maou’s wrist calls her room into clarity. She had kept it simple before she left on the path to war. In the center of the room is her futon; to the left, a low desk where she would sit and issue her orders. Her tea set is where she left it, her favorite pot resting beside it in the sunken hearth. The black metal winks at Maou with her own flame, as if welcoming her back. That’s not the only movement in her room: a shadow shifts along the distant wall, a living echo stepping out from that night in Kyoto onto the tatami.

The long blade passes through the air just vacated by the turn of her body. Maou finds she has an instant to admire it again. No longer is the metal pristine; their previous fight has left minute scuffs along the tang. This is not the only change. Maou’s opponent moves strangely, holding her sword along her right side; Maou’s left. Her strikes stop shallow, not crossing the midline of her body. Maou wards them off with her own sword, quickly called into the night with a spiral of sparks.

In the uppermost floor of Nagoya Castle, the clang of metal on metal and feet struggling for purchase on smooth tatami. Maou tumbles over her attacker, gripping her sword hand, keeping it pinned to the floor. Likewise, the other woman grapples with Maou’s. They’ve arrived at an impasse. Neither one can let go of the other, but Maou holds the advantage. Her knee presses against the other woman’s ribs, limiting the pulse of her lungs. She shudders, convulses, and the fingers of both hands begin to unwind.

Maou looks down, triumph in her eyes. Her reflection gleams up at her from a tarry pool spreading across the mat.

She dismounts, the swordsman flinching under her. Her oodachi falls from her limp and open palm, disappearing before it can disturb the pool of blood forming beneath her. Maou tugs at her scarf and pulls the hem of her clothes aside. As she’d suspected, the wound she’d inflicted before has reopened. What’s more curious is the lack of any bandage and the seeming freshness of the injury. Inquisitive fingers brush tanned skin; the swordsman quivers like a doe, eyes sharp and alert.

“Who sent you?” Maou strokes the edges of the wound, her gaze hard. She stays locked on to the swordsman’s face. Her own has formed the rigid mask belonging to the Demon King, forged from her dissatisfaction. The woman makes no effort to speak, her scarf remaining motionless. Like Maou, she doesn’t look away. Her fear is of a specific flavor, Maou realizes. She’s less afraid of what Maou might do than of her own vulnerability— her thoughts, shining clear as glass, are of the pounding of her heart rather than Maou’s hand lingering at her hip.

“What were you thinking, starting a fight like this?” Maou scowls and presses her hand to the other’s skin, attempting to slow the blood. The swordsman stiffens with a whimper. Her fingers scrabble over Maou’s wrist, attempting to move it away. Now it becomes clear: she doesn’t understand. Another part of this mystery— what kind of swordsman fights with deadly intent and skill, yet shies away from a simple wound and knows nothing of how to treat it?

“I’ll take care of this for you,” Maou says. “So long as you don’t attack me. Got it?”

The swordsman doesn’t give any sign of acknowledgement. Still, when Maou rises, she doesn’t immediately try to recall her sword. Maou considers her for a moment, then goes to a cabinet on the wall. This is where she’d kept her medical supplies from before, bandages and a small flask of sake. Those are what she’s gathering up in her arms when a voice, deep but soft, wafts into the stillness surrounding them.

“I must attack you.” The swordsman strains to push up off the tatami and into a sitting position. The effort brings beads of sweat to her forehead. Even in the darkness, the pallor rising to replace the flush of her cheeks would be obvious to the blindest of eyes. Maou looks over her shoulder at the swordsman’s mouth. It continues to move, though no sound emerges: her brows are knitted together in concentration, short bursts of air passing through her throat in wordless gasps.

“Yes, you want to kill me, we’ve established that.”

Only a hint of testiness escapes Maou’s patient smile. The gentlest of nudges sends the swordsman toppling flat onto her back, groaning with rekindled pain. Again, a quivering of her lips. How someone such as this woman could be so proficient with the sword and yet so patently innocent is a question Maou wants to unravel like the bandages she winds between her hands.

From the woman, a low murmuring, nonsensical noise like words thrust together haphazardly. And then, a slow and measured declaration: “I do not want to kill you,” she says, enunciating each word with care. “I am an agent of the World that wants you dead.”

“Oh?” Maou says, pausing with the bandage coiled neatly on her palm. “Now why— ah.” Maou lifts her head, grins widely, runs her other hand through her lengthy hair. “Honnouji,” she says, and is met with an affirmative nod. “Hah! So I’ve become that much of a threat that the World itself sends- who are you, anyway?”

The woman repeats, “I am an agent of the World.” And then, softer: “I have no need for a name, but I am designated the Devil Saber.”

“Don’t be silly.” Maou approaches on her knees, reaching for the still-leaking wound. “Everyone needs a name for others to call them by.”

“I work alone, so I do not.”

“Majin,” Maou insists, overriding the swordsman’s protests. “That’s what I’ll call you.”

“I do not-”

“To refuse to name someone is to unmake them. Would you wish that of yourself?”

Something passes behind Majin’s eyes, wild and fleeting, like the shadow of a bird upon the ground. Maou sees it, but makes no comment. The enigma of Majin is deep enough already without Maou pressing further. Instead she focuses on what’s in front of her. A dribble of sake on the wound sends Majin’s jaw clenching a tense line down her neck and arms. An attempt at refusal is made; a shrug.

“How do you hope to kill me if you can’t even take care of yourself or fight without reopening old injuries?”

Majin’s trembling subsides, and she lets Maou work. Maou wipes the dried blood away with the backs of her fingers, feels to see if it’s hot with infection. When the wound proves ordinary, Maou has Majin sit up and repeats the process with the matching incision on her back. She keeps Majin balanced against her shoulder. Bristles of hair and the hot rush of Majin’s breath tickle against her neck. Each touch inspires a shivering, until Majin is so thoroughly pressed up against Maou that there’s more contact between them than gaps.

“You said you work alone?” Maou asks, wrapping a bandage around Majin’s midsection. “Don’t you have anyone else?”

“I do not need to.” Majin’s eyes and voice grow distant as she speaks. The air in the room shifts, as if to fill a sudden absence. “I was born sickly and frail. The person who would have been my older sister couldn’t stand it. She prayed to whatever god would answer her for some way to let me live. The World— the Counter Force— answered her. I would be taken away and given a single task. In exchange, I would be allowed the chance to live.”

“So when you arrived in Kyoto to kill me, was that the first you’d seen of the world?”

“Yes.”

Maou nods thoughtfully. Her fingers tuck the edge of the bandage under the rest, and retreat to drum against Maou’s lower lip.

“And if you kill me, what happens then?”

“My job is complete. I am no longer needed, and my bargain is concluded.”

“So you’ll die.”

Majin blinks, as if just noticing how her surroundings have changed. Now free of Maou’s hands, she tries to move away, and tumbles again onto her back.

“You shouldn’t move so much,” Maou tells her. “I may have wrapped it, but you need to allow that cut time to heal before you come fight me again.”

“Your charity will not stay my hand. I am tasked with killing the Demon King.”

“Don’t be stupid. You could hardly lift that ridiculously long sword of yours when we fought. How do you expect to kill me when you’ll be defeated so easily?”

Majin stares unsteadily at the ceiling. Her shoulders slump in resignation, only to rise again at the gentle rumble of Maou’s voice. “Spend the night here, at the very least,” she offers. “If you insist on trying to kill me come morning, I’ll allow it. First, you must recover.”

Maou’s tone leaves no room for argumentation. Majin yields— the sting of defeat is becoming far too familiar for having lived such a short time. When she rises, it’s to limp the few feet to Maou’s futon. She collapses on it with the air of a dying man breathing his last, nearly losing her soul in its softness.

“You know that’s mine.”

Majin nods, not a straight up and down of her head, but a wandering shake. Her shoulders quake minutely, gooseflesh standing in clear relief against the shadows. That is her only movement as Maou crawls in beside her, lifting the sheets over them both as she turns onto her side. There are benefits to having brought Hell with you: you’re never cold, for one thing. Heat seeps out from Maou’s body and into the fabric, and slowly, Majin goes still.

This, too, lasts for only a moment. Majin moves closer to the center of the futon, inching towards Maou. Each shift of her body brings new warmth to her skin. This feeling is simultaneously foreign and exhilarating, wanted yet forbidden. Majin has one purpose, and that is to kill the Demon King.

But for now, that’s an impossible reality, one to be concerned with later. Majin closes her eyes and lets Maou’s warmth flow around her.

Who it is that makes the final move to bridge the space between them, Majin doesn’t know. The gentle lull of sleep calling to her made it impossible to tell. What she knows is the heat of Maou’s now unarmored body against her back, the twining together of their legs. Majin’s eyes are too heavy to open now. Rather than look, she presses herself against Maou, feels the ample swell of her breasts, the toned arm resting on her hip, long fingers tracing over her bandages. This is her last thought as sleep overtakes her: what does it mean, when the Demon King is the object of her dreams?

* * *

The outside of Nagoya Castle. No one questions the woman dressed in red as she slips into the early morning fog. The castle’s defenses and guards know nothing of keeping enemies from leaving the premises. At the gate, a samurai with a wide-brimmed helmet points the way to Kyoto. Majin offers no thanks, departing into the mist. Her gratitude is the silence that the castle and its town are allowed to keep.

The next day at noon, the Demon King and her armies march on the road a lonely swordsman has traveled.

From her vantage point in the mountains, Majin surveys the makeshift camp. Her target awaits below, but the wound in Majin’s side is still sharp. She would lose. But would she die? The question has weighed heavily on her as she traveled towards Kyoto. Victories in this world are paid for in blood and souls. Maou has refused to kill her twice now. There’s no clear reason why, and Majin can’t begin to try to guess it. What she does know sets her teeth on edge: she continues to live at the whim of the Demon King.

Between the trees, a flash of warm color. Maou walks slowly among the troops, deep in conversation with a man hanging close to her side. Majin closes her eyes, evens her breathing, counts to five. When she opens them, Maou is out of sight. The uneasy tension in her stomach, the closest thing Majin might have to an instinct, settles almost instantly. Now a subdued impulse, Majin reasons with it: she would only be defeated if she attacked now. With the number of men between her position and Maou’s, she might not even make it.

Still, a restless impatience takes hold in her heart. Her purpose is to kill the Demon King, so why wait? (Why was she given life, if it would only be taken away once her task was done?) Surely she must be incurring the wrath of the World by continuing to wait. (And what could it do to her? She’s not a proper being; she hadn’t even had a name. Even as a human, the being that would then be named Majin was born for the explicit purpose of dying.)

But wait is all that Majin can do. The army in the valley sets off at sunrise, earlier than she anticipated. Her side screams in protest as she tries to match their pace. She keeps to the hills to avoid being seen, a needless effort. Majin is not the person that Maou, at the head of her forces, hunts with avid anger.

Taking the main road, it’s inevitable that they would meet Mitsuhide’s army on this path. Kyoto is still some hours away when Maou halts her men. Majin is too far behind to hear what words are exchanged. What she makes out instead is the sudden appearance of Maou’s sword in her hand, raised high above her head. She can almost hear the embers that accompany it; her fingers twitch, aching for the cool metal of her own weapon.

Maou’s front line charges, swords drawn, while the back ranks deploy bamboo walls and prepare to fire their muskets. There’s a moment of stillness, a single second of clarity in the moment before the two armies merge and pave the road with their blood. Above, a sky dotted with wisps of cloud. Around them, lush trees overflowing with life. Soon, they’ll be overrun with the red of dying men, the black of smoke and charred corpses. That is what Maou brings; that is why the World wants her dead. And to kill her, a counterpart of the same colors, meant to disappear with the last breaths of the Demon King. Majin realizes: even if she puts off her duty, her fate is the same. Her story is tied to that of the Demon King.

A volley rings out, biting at the squirming mass of bodies blocking the road. Those surrounding the ones who fall don’t cry out, nor show surprise. This is the life they’ve chosen. This is the life given to Majin. The men who die crumple to a dirge of gunfire; when Majin goes, her end will be silent. No sound will mark her passing. The only noise that had foretold her coming was the crackling of blazing Honnouji. In the valley, Hell rushes to claim the life of the man who had tried to send Nobunaga there. Slowly, as if drawn by a long and meandering string, Majin follows. The flutter of Maou’s cape is her beacon.

Majin knows nothing of war or how to tell who has the advantage. From where she stands, the two armies seem evenly matched. She dances around their edges as the fighting spreads to encompass the forest. Rifle shots and slashing katanas glint between the trees. The front line winds unevenly across the hills, constantly shifting, though a pattern soon becomes clear. Mitsuhide’s men are being inexorably pushed back towards the city they’d marched from.

A clear victor emerges after but a few sparse hours. Mitsuhide’s men begin to break and run, and for their efforts are cut down from behind. This, Majin understands well. In this age as much as the one she had been born into, traitors who turn their back to their masters are given but one reward.

At the head of the pursuit, Maou breaks off to chase some unseen figure. The shadowy canopy swallows her up, and she’s gone. The rest of her army keeps charging forward, seemingly intent on chasing their foes all the way back to Kyoto.

Majin turns aside and follows Maou deeper into the hills. Each step she takes is reminiscent of the first memories of her life. Cool earth beneath her sandals; hot wind pelting her face. But with that, another reminder: the sting of her wound; soft fingers working over it. The thought brings Majin to a stuttering stop, and in that moment of pause, a piercing cry echoes from higher up in the trees.

Majin goes on stumbling up the slope, just in time to see the ashen remains of Akechi Mitsuhide crumble against Maou’s upraised palm. The earth around them both smolders lightly, faint wisps of smoke like ghosts rising from charred leaves. Maou’s final embrace for the man who once was one of her closest advisors: for the moment of his death, he shares the same Hell that tried to take Maou.

She can’t move. Majin tries to get her hand to close, even just a twitch. Maou kicks the dirt at her feet, still lost in thought. She’ll look up now, any second. She’ll see Majin— and perhaps Majin won’t be so lucky for a third time. Of all the ways to die, dissolving in a sooty cloud must be one of the worst ways. Majin wouldn’t want to disappear like that.

(She finds she doesn’t want to disappear at all.)

A low hum, and Maou lifts her head. Their eyes connect: Maou’s pensive smile locks itself in place. She seems momentarily unsure of herself, calling for neither her sword nor her fire. Only her gaze betrays the fact that what holds her motionless is not fear. That alone is for Majin, rooting her to the floor like one of the trees she imagines pressing herself into, escaping from heated red eyes.

(She imagines sinking into a wooden embrace, and finds she can only think of Maou’s.)

“You can’t be feeling better already.” Maou chuckles throatily, lowers her arm. Majin bristles: the Demon King must not see her as a threat. “Do you really want me dead so badly?”

Majin’s answer is to jump forward, oodachi unfurling in gold over her head, preparing to bring upraised arms down on Maou’s unarmored neck.

Maou’s reply is her fist driving straight into Majin’s side, impeccably aimed at her wound. Majin jerks to an agonizing stop, sword all but forgotten as it falls and adds fragments of gold to the rising smoke. Trembling, she sinks to her knees. Maou hasn’t drawn blood, but she’s taken Majin’s breath. Majin struggles for air, but no matter how she gasps for it, it’s not enough.

Still, she manages to choke out a word: “Why?”

“Hm?” Maou crouches by her side, placing a hand on Majin’s head. Her palm is still warm from the fire she’d unleashed from it. Majin can’t help but strain at it with wobbly legs, trying to push up into that touch. Softness paints over the curiosity in Maou’s smile. “It was personal. And it was only fair.”

Majin turns her head slightly. She scarcely dares look at the black smear upon the earth. Her instinct roars when her gaze draws near it, a thirst demanding to be slaked by the taking of Maou’s life. Again, she declares her purpose. Her voice shakes around the words like her body against Maou’s fist. “But I am tasked with killing you,” she says, and wonders if she should mourn the absence of Maou’s hand as it slides slowly down her hair, then away. “Why don’t you do the same?”

“If I kill you, you die; if you kill me, you disappear anyway. Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that?”

“It is the nature of my agreement.”

“An agreement you made to try and have a chance at living.” Maou stands, towering over Majin with her full height. Even at that distance, her intensity is no less chilling. Majin attempts to speak, and finds her pulse choking her throat. “Tell me, did that agreement ever specify _ when _you had to kill me?”

Forming words is beyond Majin. Jerkily, she nods. Nothing about this is right. What the World had told her of the Demon King paints a portrait of a merciless warlord who rages across Japan, her fire worse than that of any oni. All Maou does is grin at Majin and toss her hair back over her shoulders.

“Then you might as well experience what life has to offer you before you try and kill me seriously,” Maou tells her. “I won’t tell you how. What a man does with his life should be up to him alone— or at the very least, he should be allowed to fight what would challenge that.”

Majin grinds her teeth together, jaw clenching as she pushes herself up onto one leg. Maou is already retreating, far beyond the reach of Majin’s oodachi, lifting a hand into the air. Her farewell rings through the trees with a force afforded only to words of absolute truth: “If you decide you want to truly live, you’ll always be welcome with me.”

She’s gone before Majin is in any shape to pursue. Majin can’t stand just yet, nurses the ache in her side with tentative rubs and grimaces. Just enough force to keep her kneeling for several minutes, yet not enough to reopen the wound. Truly, the Demon King is someone to be respected, if not outright feared.

What Majin feels with regards to Maou is the latter, but not entirely. To her disappointment, to her terror, there’s something more, an emotion Majin can’t place. She knows nothing of it, not even a name.

(Would the Demon King be able to tell her what it is?)

Limping back towards the main road, Majin is visited by a realization: two sensations, each entwined inseparably with the other. For the first time, she has a reason to want something; an agent of the World does not want, so the right reaction must be to hate that she does.

* * *

Maou is sitting at the window of her room. Outside, a golden sea of lanterns stretching down to the banks of Kyoto’s two rivers. Japan is not yet at peace— it’s merely turning over in its sleep. This week, Maou puts a pause to her campaigns to travel back towards her childhood home. Tomorrow, she’ll complete her journey and be back in Nagoya Castle, safe in Owari. This stop in Kyoto is merely a convenience.

After all— there’s still time before the celebrations begin, and Kyoto is a city marked in history for its many conflicts. Better for her to settle things here, than to bring the fighting back to her home province.

In her hands, she cradles a favored cup. The gold gleams with the fire rolling off her fingertips. Steam rises from the tea being boiled against her palms. Being the Demon King has its rare practicalities. As she raises the cup to her lips, a sound from just outside her door: the wood settling under the light tread of an intruder.

She hasn’t seen the Devil Saber for some time, she realizes. Kyoto is a place of crossroads: perhaps she will, tonight. Maou rolls her shoulders, stretches out her legs. From the doorway, silence. Whoever’s out there is waiting for something. Perhaps to see if she’s asleep. Maou drinks again, long and languid movements. The tea is a welcome balm to her throat, which prickles ever so often with the scent of burning wood. She has survived Honnouji; its fire is hers, but so is its pain.

Another sip, and Maou is finished. She sets the cup to the side and gathers her feet under her, ready to spring. A flourish of her hand brings her katana to bear. Well— even before her death, she had never been a patient person.

She calls out: “Do you intend to wait there all night?”

From behind the door, a shuffling. Perhaps it is Majin this time, come again now that her wound is healed. It’s been long enough for that to be possible. Maou rises into a crouch, approaching the door. The light outside plays across the shoji paper as she moves, tracing the faint silhouettes of the ones— _ not Majin; how disappointing— _ waiting to ambush her.

Fire and destruction leave a bad taste in a host’s mouth, and it’s for this reason alone that Maou restrains herself from striking immediately. The hall comes alive with the patter of running feet, and light returns to the paper screens. Not sworn killers who had come for her, then— opportunistic samurai would be her next guess.

Behind her, a cloud passes over the moon, briefly covering the room in shadow. Maou recalls the sky she’d seen just moments before, and whirls with her blade raised. Majin leaps at her from the windowsill, oodachi outstretched, steel gleaming not just in her hands but in her eyes. A series of determined blows peppers Maou’s guard, forcing her to yield ground. Maou does so in a circle, guiding them in a backwards dance around the perimeter of the room. Should she be cornered, Majin will have an advantage that even Maou would be hard-pressed to match.

Their swords clash again and again, bright peals lost in the chatter of the crowds below. Amidst all this, Maou can’t help what leaves her throat: a brilliant laugh in the same tones as the turning leaves and crackling embers, a declaration of her love of the fight. Majin, rattled, returns this with a sharp set of jabs, all of which Maou deftly evades. This is the assassin that the World sent to kill her. She marvels, not at the ineptness that any other samurai would deride Majin for, but for her increasing speed. She’s faster than before, but with every passing moment of their fight, she finds something new to attempt. A shorter step, a feinted lunge. She is learning, not from Maou, but from some unknowable teacher. Perhaps it’s the World itself she draws this knowledge from.

But knowledge can only take Majin so far. Her stamina, untested, flags soon and suddenly. Openings in her guard go untouched by Maou’s grace. Her footwork grows sloppy and slow, and still Maou leads her in unending circles. Her own anger has been burnt out in such a way before.

Majin’s strength lasts her but another circuit. On their next pass, the tip of her sword barely reaches the height of Maou’s breast. The hilt hangs loosely from trembling fingers. Majin heaves to take in sharp breaths. She seems to have figured out the flaw in Maou’s plan. If Maou will not kill her, then nothing is stopping her from simply trying to kill Maou until she succeeds.

Likewise, nothing will stop Maou from drawing each of their meetings into prolonged conflict, as she does this one. She doesn’t stop circling until Majin is too worn to do much but stand, oodachi tilting towards the floor.

“An admirable effort!” Maou tells her. What Majin has not learned, and what Maou will keep from her for now: the strategy of placement. The exit is to Maou’s back, as it was when Majin had entered. “I haven’t seen determination like that from anyone except me!” The moon shines in duplicate in the room, a blinding crescent forming Maou’s smile. “But this fight is over, Majin. Stay the night— I’ve already paid for the room.”

Hell is not just pure fire, but also smoke. A mantle of it drifts from Maou’s shoulders as she swirls and disappears through the door. The cloud envelops Majin before fleeing out into the cold night, where it meets its end. In those brief seconds, Maou has vanished into the hall and doubtless into the streets, where Majin will be hard pressed to find her, could she even stand.

Majin lets herself topple forward, showing to the moon what she held back so fiercely from Maou. The weakness in her legs thanks her as she pitches onto the futon, the last hint of Maou’s lingering warmth cooling under Majin’s body. Silver light plays over her face, offering her a moment of calm. In this moment, the world lays itself out for her to see: streets rife with livingness, each light she sees like ten or a hundred souls that dwell in this city. This is not the World that had sent her; this is the world that, for however briefly she lives, she walks in, but will never belong in.

A trickle of salt runs down the side of her face and between her parted lips. Majin finds the first thing in the world that she hates. A bowl set in a golden skull shines beside her. Majin reaches for it, takes it up in cupped hands, drinks. The last dregs of tea have long since gone cold, but its bitterness strikes Majin through to her heart. It’s just right.

* * *

Nagoya Castle. The night before the Bon festival begins. Maou, again, sits at the balcony. This is the nightly ritual she’s adopted whenever she stays in a city. The lifeblood of Owari roams the streets, a cacophony reaching up towards Nagoya Castle in a low murmur. This is what Maou has fought so hard for, even clawing her way back from Hell. War has plagued Japan for far too long. Living in its shadow, the true potential of the people suppresses itself in favor of survival. Maou will change that, once she unites the country under her banner, and she will keep that potential unobstructed. She knows this to be her purpose as surely as Majin’s is to stop her.

Along the forested boundary, movement. A shadow works its way up the castle wall while a careless guard has his back turned. The flutter of a scarf in a minute breeze tells Maou who’s come to visit her.

She meets Majin at the sole staircase that reaches the uppermost floor, fire in her hand rather than a lantern. Majin is also unarmed, though she clutches something tightly: a golden cup, thought forgotten in Kyoto. She extends her sword hand, offering the cup with an upraised palm. It seems to be as much a greeting as a peace offering.

“Oh, thanks!” Maou plucks the cup from her with measured precision. Their fingers make contact for the precise interval that straddles coincidence and deliberation. A tremor works through Majin’s body, a rapture from neck to spine. “I thought I wouldn’t see this again.” Maou spins the cup, mouth down, around her finger. Bemused eyes study Majin, lingering on the most aimless of places. “Is this the only reason you came here tonight?”

“I came for what you offered me.” Majin’s words emerge stilted. She does not speak so much as recite lines practiced on the journey to Owari. “To see what living is like aside from fighting.”

“Is that so?” The warmth of Maou’s grin washes over Majin, nearly tangible, the sensation of stepping from a cool room out into Kyoto’s summer. It isn’t unpleasant— Majin imagines that this might be what it feels like to return to a place called home. “What’s changed your mind?”

There’s that look again— eyes laden with confusion and the sensation of having lost one’s way. Maou shrugs, having needed no answer. Only idle curiosity compels her to ask such a question. What she concerns herself with is not whatever Majin might say, but whether she can say it at all. She hasn’t yet learned to vocalize what _ want _is, but Maou plans to draw it out of her soon enough.

“Well, I guess it can’t be helped, then. I’ll declare you one of my retainers in the morning—”

“I am not your retainer.”

The reply comes swiftly, and with a bit of bite. Majin’s eyes narrow slightly, though she makes no movement to call her weapon. Confusion returns soon enough: Maou throws her head back, throaty laughter rippling the air.

“It’s simply a precaution,” she states. “So no one will go attacking you thinking you’re someone sent to kill me. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

“I am not your retainer,” Majin repeats, eyebrows knitting together.

“Yes, because you’re already in the service of the World. Isn’t that right?” Maou leans forward, one hand on the rail of the staircase. What she thinks, but does not say: _ such a strong loyalty to a master who will never reward that allegiance. _Her smile is equal amounts amusement and pity. “You’re free to tell whoever asks that you aren’t really with me, if you want. I’m still telling Monkey and the others that you’re with me. It’d be a shame if you got killed before you got to see anything, wouldn’t it?”

The hallway rings with laughter again. Maou descends the steps, beckoning to Majin. “I’ll take you into town tomorrow,” she says. “Now, there should be a spare room…”

Maou stops a little ways down the hall, palming a door aside questioningly. She nods at its interior, apparently content. Then she looks at Majin: “Will this do?”

A twofold dilemma. Majin doesn’t know enough of her own desires to be able to answer Maou’s question. What she does want, she can’t give voice to: Maou hasn’t offered it; Majin stares at her, silent, in the hope that she might.

Maou blinks and shrugs, almost helplessly. The sight hits Majin like a tangible blow would, knocking the air from her lungs. The Demon King looks, for the briefest of moments, achingly human.

While she’s regaining her breath, Maou asks, “Would you like something else, then?”

To this, Majin manages a nod. Her eyes do not leave Maou. The darkness of the hall gives her a reprieve: Maou doesn’t notice the way Majin’s eyes are dilated, or how they track her every move. Maou offers nothing further, neither comment nor question. She appears content to wait, seconds lapsing into minutes, each of their breaths drawn out into yet another thread added to the blanket of silence between them.

_ I liked… _ Yes, that’s how she’d begin. But what could she ask of the Demon King that wouldn’t be refused? She glances longingly towards the stairs, then back at Maou. Nothing changes in the Demon King’s expression. Maybe she wouldn’t be asking too much, then. So she says: “I liked sharing a bed.”

Majin says nothing about Maou. It’s not a matter of pride or implicit hinting. She hasn’t even considered that clarification might be a necessary thing. Maou understands, though. There’s only one person in this world that the Devil Saber would have slept in the same space as, and to whom she makes that request again.

“Then come with me.” Maou strides past with a faint whisper of her cloak. Back up the stairs she goes, Majin tailing her closely. One hand grips the rail, the other her scarf. It seems wrong that the Demon King caves so quickly and easily. Maou’s smile sets her heart racing— she should be on her guard; that’s what her senses tell her.

The threat she awaits never materializes. Maou steps aside to let Majin enter first, and here is the rare occurrence of a sight Majin could describe as familiar. The mat she’d bled on has since been replaced, though everything else looks the same. There’s the window, the futon. Maou is already sliding back under the covers, a gesture more for Majin’s benefit than her own. 

Majin joins her, and is immediately enveloped by the warmth of the sheets and Maou’s body. Like before, she inches towards the center: minute shifts of her body, growing bolder and more frequent, until she feels her back make contact with Maou’s robe. The firm pressure of Maou’s arm settles against her side, and now something different: the hard jut of Maou’s chin along her shoulder. The feeling is foreign, but not unwelcome.

Outside the window, the moon claws its way through the stars and to its throne at the head of the night sky. Maou’s breathing evens against her ear, slow and unknowingly mimicking the throb of her heart echoed in Majin’s own pulse. With Maou asleep, Majin is free to run her fingers over the hand sliding down her waist. A question arises within her as she grazes over rough knuckles, and settles into a recognizable form somewhere along Maou’s wrist. What has the Demon King endured, that she would so readily fall asleep beside someone who’s declared repeatedly her intent to kill her?

A stutter in Majin’s chest, a seizing that toes the definition of painful. Unwittingly, she’s squeezes Maou’s hand, as if to try and call her sword. There’s no response from Maou. Her eyes remain gently closed. The slight shift of her legs is not because of any disturbance, but to fit herself closely against Majin’s body. Accompanying the drooping of Majin’s eyes, a thought: she might not have been the only one waiting for something like this to occur. Why else would Maou have welcomed her in so readily?

The moon attains its seat and begins, for the long hours that wind from night into morning, to preside over the courtly waltz of constellations over the earth. Light, clear and silver, finds its way through the window into Maou’s bedroom. A wash of it crests over Maou’s hair, tickles her face, and laps gently at Majin’s closed eyelids. Whether the Devil Saber has truly fallen asleep is a question only the moon can answer. Should it ask the argent tide what it’s found, the moonlight will say that it doesn’t know for sure. Majin’s dream and reality have mixed inseparably. In both, Maou’s arms are where she rests.

* * *

Maou and Majin are walking along one of the main streets. This close to the heart of the city, the path is lined with various stalls and paved with the wanderings of so many people in kimono. Unlit lanterns sway over their heads, waiting for nightfall to come and signal the beginning of the festivities. Lurching with them, the stack of boxes and packages in Maou’s arms, the answers to a series of questions Majin had never once considered before. From the top down: a red ribbon for Majin to weave into her hair. A coat for the cold nights (black with gold trim, somewhat styled after Western admirals).

Majin keeps a few paces ahead, darting between the stalls with the same swiftness she fights with. The pouch of coins Maou gave her clinks gently in one hand. In the other, a half-eaten stick of oden, disappearing into Majin’s mouth as she bites down on the stick to free her other hand. She pauses, tilting her head, as if considering something. Then it’s back to Maou, empty stick scraping against her teeth, an explosive energy in her limbs. Her eyes gleam with the same brilliance Maou had seen an hour before, when she’d tied the counterpart to the ribbon in the box to the side of Majin’s hair, and seen her exultant smile reflected in the river. “I like this,” Majin says, gesturing with the stick. “But I forgot what it’s called.”

“Oden.”

“Oden? Oden.” Majin repeats the word to herself, as if to engrave it into her tongue by sound alone. As she nods, her gaze falls upon the small orange sphere resting atop the boxes. “What’s that?”

“It’s a tangerine.”

Majin picks it up between her fingers and rolls it around. “Can you eat it? It smells good.”

“Would you like to try some?” Warmth blossoms up from Maou’s stomach at the excitement filling Majin’s expression. She follows in Maou’s steps to a recess between the shops, crouches as she does. She watches Maou’s fingers unpeel the tangerine with rapt attention. When she’s done, Maou holds out two or three wedges stuck together for Majin to take.

Majin leans forward instead, and with a light nip, the offered slices disappear into her mouth. She chews thoughtfully, carefully evaluating the taste flooding her tongue. Of secondary concern is Maou’s hand gently rubbing the top of her head. Unknowingly, she pushes herself up against it. She reports her observations as Maou asked her to: “It’s sweet,” she says. “I like it.”

“I’m glad you do. Do you want the rest?”

Majin hesitates for a few moments, uncertain of what feels different. At last she registers the added weight on her head. Her cheeks run hot, and she stumbles to her feet. She needs to feel the rush of cool air over her skin. “You can have the rest.” Majin backs towards the crowds, both hands vanishing into the folds of her scarf. “I’ll go look around more.”

Majin turns, and Maou disappears behind the curtain of bodies sweeping Majin along. The more distance she puts between them, the calmer she feels. What remains is the occasional fluttering in her chest. She thinks it must be her instinct settling down again, having risen with her pulse to remind her of her purpose. This arrangement with the Demon King is only temporary. Once Majin has taken in everything she wants to know, they’ll be enemies again.

(She had, alarmingly and overnight, somehow ceased to think of them as enemies.)

Majin cannot get accustomed to this. Her contentment is as fragile as the brittle peace spun over Japan, to be torn to shreds as soon as the festival has ended. Still, that doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy what she has while it lasts. That doesn’t mean she can’t admire this world with wide pupils— everything from its color, to those who inhabit it, to Maou.

She walks a small circuit around the nearby stalls. Her shadow lingers curiously over their contents: small fish swimming in a shallow pool, intricately painted bowls, balls of seaweed and rice wrapped around some filling. Majin imagines that all of these, somehow, are connected. Whether they are, and whether she’ll be able to see it, she doesn’t think she’ll ever know. That’s left for the humans of this world to determine, and not Majin.

Suddenly, amidst a crowd of hundreds of people, the acute and stinging pang of loneliness. Majin turns and threads her way back towards Maou with innate precision. It would only be logical that the person sent to kill the Demon King would be able to find her so easily.

Maou is right where Majin left her, tangerine eaten and peel turned to ash. She sits with her back to the wall and her elbows rested on her knees, and she’s singing. Majin doesn’t catch many of the words— she sinks to her knees in the dirt and presses herself wordlessly to Maou’s shoulder. Not knowing what to do, her arms hang loosely at her sides. At once, the chatter of so many voices dispels that eerie melody. Maou brings a hand up, fingers curling tenderly along the dip between Majin’s neck and chin.

“Do you want to keep going?” Maou asks her.

Majin shakes her head. “Can we go back?”

Maou scrutinizes her for a long moment. Her gaze pierces Majin like a blade, but she feels no pain from it. That comes from herself alone, the tightness in her chest creeping up to the base of her throat.

“Of course. Come on, then.”

Maou scoops up the packages and balances them with one arm against her chest. Her other hand takes hold of Majin’s arm, keeping her tight against her side. “So I don’t lose you,” she says. The graceful curve of her smile suggests something more.

Together, they navigate the shifting mass of bodies, emerging near one of the bridges leading back to Nagoya Castle. Perhaps it’s the forest along the opposite side of the riverbank, but something about this place makes Majin feel as if she can breathe easier. Now that the weight is mostly lifted from her, she can ask what she’d intended to back in town: “What were you singing?”

“It’s from a play called Atsumori,” Maou explains. “One of my favorite verses.”

“Will you sing it again?”

Maou obliges with a fond narrowing of her eyes and the hint of an upturn to her lips. A low, strong voice melds with the birdsong as they cross the bridge. Majin presses closer to Maou, and wonders if she imagines an equal pressure against her arm. Regardless of the answer, the final dregs of heaviness slip away from her chest and join Maou’s song in the air.

* * *

The bath just inside the castle walls. Majin lingers in the doorway, her forehead just touching the curtains separating the inner space from the entrance. The sprig of loose hair protruding from the top of her head peers through the space between the two lengths of fabric. She wrings her hands in the towel she brought to dry herself. The bath is occupied. Something compels Majin to stay in spite of this. She tells herself it’s her instinct.

Inside the bath, a billowing white cloud more at home in the sky. Maou’s power accentuates the fires heating the water. Majin can barely make her out through the smoke. What she sees is a familiar shadow laying back against the wooden flooring, arms spread wide to either side. A second unmoving mass must be Maou’s clothes, folded neatly and pushed against the wall.

Enclosed in this small and humid space, Majin feels her skin flush and accumulate a thin layer of sweat. The best thing to do would be to go outside and wait under the moon. Majin can’t seem to do it. Her feet feel anchored where they stand, as if she’s become part of the bathing room. As if it’s only natural that, as an extension of this place, she observe Maou.

Majin hears a stirring of water. Two arms punch through the steam, brief voids of clear air spiraling around Maou’s arms as she stretches. They strain towards the roof, freeze, retreat slightly. Maou’s voice rings off the bare walls: “Majin, are you going to keep standing there?”

She freezes. There’s the sound of water shifting, and the steam parts briefly. Maou has made her way to the near edge of the bath and rests her arms one atop the other. Her chin settles lightly atop her forearms. The water conceals the rest of her body, to which Majin finds her eyes irresistibly drawn. The Demon King is unarmored and unprepared. It would be a simple matter for Majin to call her sword and strike. She deliberates it seriously, and decides against it. There’s still more to the world that Majin wants to see, and the Demon King has done nothing worthy of the world’s attention for a while now.

From Maou, another gentle prompting: “Aren’t you going to come in?”

Majin steps hesitantly through the curtains. Maou slides away from the edge as Majin undresses, settling back in the spot she’d occupied before. Though everything else about her posture oozes indifference, her eyes attend to Majin’s every move with avid interest. They follow the path of her leggings down to the floor, and the winding descent of her dress soon after. Majin, her back turned, pays no notice. What Maou admits to no one, not her closest advisors or even the woman sharing her bed: she’s been lonely. There’s a certain authority that cheating death will give you, but with it, an equally heavy curse: she’s been separated, in the same sense as Majin, from the rest of humanity.

Majin approaches the edge of the bath and crouches, trailing her fingers along its surface. Finding its temperature acceptable, she lowers herself in, feet first. The steam has somewhat cleared: Maou seems to have stopped using her power, perhaps for Majin’s comfort. They stare at each other from across the bath in silence. Majin has nothing to say; Maou is content to enjoy the quiet, running her fingers over the water much like Majin had, as if she’s trying to replicate the feeling. The motion sends little waves across the water, lapping at Majin’s chest and a twisting streak of darkened skin following the midline of Maou’s body. Transfixed, Majin can’t tear her gaze away from it.

In time, Maou realizes Majin is staring at her. A quick glance down tells her what’s captured Majin’s attention. “Oh, this?” she says. “It’s just a scar.”

“Why?” Maou’s answer has spurred so many questions to Majin’s lips, and the simplest of them all forces its way through.

“This is from Honnouji,” Maou explains. “From right before we met, actually. I know, it looks like it should’ve killed me, right?” Maou grins, gesturing widely. The slight rise of her body from the water reveals a similar scar, horizontal, the same height as her navel. “It probably did, but it didn’t stick. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here!”

“And…” Majin gestures to her own shoulder. On Maou’s, in the same place, a mark almost like a twisting vortex, a blemish of raised skin.

“I got shot there, about… really, I forget when.” Maou laughs, shoulders lifting in a sheepish shrug. “When you fight so many battles, all the times you get shot start feeling the same! I remember that one, though, it was bad. My doctor had to go and dig around to get the bullet out. Really…” Maou goes quiet, blinking owlishly. Majin’s stare, if anything, seems more intent. “Do you want to touch one?”

Water flies as Majin startles, taken aback by Maou’s question. “I— would you let me?”

“I’m offering, aren’t I?” Maou gestures with her hand, a clear _ come here_. “Don’t be so shy.”

Majin slips away from the wall and into the water, wading through it clumsily. Her foot catches on a snarl in the wood, and she pitches forward. Maou catches her effortlessly, pulling Majin into her embrace with a flash of teeth and a mellowed, “Hello.” Red heat shoots from Majin’s chest, up her neck and into her cheeks, accompanied by a timid squeak. Such hesitation doesn’t affect her hands, which go immediately to the scar on Maou’s chest, tracing its path with a light touch bordering on reverent. She follows it down to where it joins with the other, and at its end finds herself having unintentionally wrapped an arm around Maou’s hip.

Her first thought isn’t of breaking their contact, but of how nice it feels. Maou isn’t objecting either, merely watching. Her fingers rub lazy circles into Majin’s back, trying to coax some tension out of her muscles. They’re closer to each other than they’ve ever been before, Majin realizes. The warmth of the water mediates their touches, makes their proximity forgettable. This is the first time they’ve been this close face to face, and Majin finds that she can’t look up. Not that anything is stopping her— it’s simply physically impossible for her to. The command that would raise her head goes unrecognized by her nerves. Majin is either stunned or afraid, neither an acceptable thing to be in the presence of the Demon King.

Something wet brushes her cheek. Maou pats the side of Majin’s face gently, rising to her full height. Water cascades from her hair as it falls flat against her back. “You’re turning red,” she breathes, tilting Majin’s chin upwards. Their eyes meet: the fire of the Demon King dances in Maou’s, a perpetual hunger so ravenous that even looking eats away at something deep within Majin. She looks elsewhere as soon as Maou will let her. A quick chortle bursts through the air beside her. Then, as fluidly as water around them, Maou unravels their entwined bodies and steps towards the edge of the pool.

“I think I’ve been here long enough,” she says as she climbs out. “Enjoy the bath. You don’t have to put out the fire— someone else will see to that later tonight.”

Modesty is not a concept Majin knows. Still, she finds herself only capable of stealing furtive glances across the room at Maou. Now she notices what she couldn’t have seen in the water: the asymmetrical marks on each leg, scars that writhe in the flickering of the lanterns. In this lighting, they seem to be the very flames that had licked away at Maou’s skin. The hem of Maou’s robe falls over them, concealing them from sight, and a low breath hisses from between Majin’s teeth. She’d been holding it— she can’t tell herself why.

With a nod, Maou pushes the curtain aside and ducks out into the night. The fading crunch of gravel announces her departure. Majin’s hand finds its way to her cheek, stroking the place Maou had touched. Some undercurrent, not heat, is only now just beginning to fade. Majin keeps her hand in place until she feels it go, and even then, holds it there a minute more. Like before, she’s become a fixture of the bath. This time, she’s not the observer. Rather, she’s the ceiling being contemplated, subject to the thousand unspoken questions of those who’d stared up into it. Added to them, one of Majin’s own: of why she can’t rid her hands of the texture of Maou’s skin, nor herself of the Demon King’s touch. Majin receives no answer, and is content to. The answer would terrify her: that the Demon King has left its mark on her, as surely as the World has.

Maou is already asleep when Majin returns from the bath. She’s left one side of the futon for Majin to take, yet her arm intrudes, unintentionally, into the space. It rests just below the pillows: not an invitation, but an acknowledgement of the inevitable. Majin slips under the covers beside her, cheek resting against the inside of Maou’s arm. She settles into place, but does not relax just yet. Maou has adjustments of her own to make, the sleepy shuffle of her knees to bring herself closer to the other source of warmth.

Maou’s left herself indisputably open, Majin realizes. In the bath, Maou would have at least had her fire. Asleep like this, she wouldn’t be able to react in time even if she sensed Majin calling her sword. Something swells in Majin’s chest, her tired and tormented heart begging for a reprieve as it stutters under the weight of realization.

Maou trusts her. That in itself seems like it should be impossible, but their reality says otherwise. So fresh off the betrayal that had made her the Demon King, it should be unthinkable. And then, a thought that snatches the residual warmth of the bath and the heat of Maou’s body away with all the swiftness of a blade. Perhaps it’s intentional. She’s happy with Majin— she’s declared so more times than Majin can keep track of. Inexplicably, the possibility makes her throat ache. Perhaps this is how Maou intends to die.

But that can’t be it. It was Maou who’d advocated so strongly for Majin to embrace the life she’d been given. A person of such strong conviction like Maou wouldn’t surrender such an ideal so quickly or easily. Then, why? Majin can’t think of a reason for Maou to allow this possibility. Or- maybe, she’s giving Majin a choice. That would have to be it. That’ll have to satisfy Majin— no longer can she fight back the heaviness of her eyelids, or the alluring softness of the futon. Soon, Majin is also asleep. The only movement in the room is the synchronous motion of their breathing.

* * *

On the banks of the Akui River, looking at the imposing jut of Ichinomiya Castle against the mountain to its back. Maou stares at her battle plans, sightlessly tracing over charcoal battle lines. Her mind is not on Shikoku, but elsewhere— not in Japan, but in a realm unknown to man. Perhaps it’s the Hell she brought with her.

A single thought has occupied her mind for the past weeks. Found in the library of one of the castles they’d taken and ransacked, a scroll. It details an artifact of great power— the shape of it unknown, but its purpose singular. It is a device meant for the granting of wishes.

Normally Maou would dismiss such an idea as idle fancy. Even if such a thing were real, no doubt its use would come with a price. Maou had been ready to forget about that scroll and its contents, and then the dreams came.

No two dreams start the same way, but their endings are identical. A flash of golden light, a burst of energy incomparable to even the strongest of Maou’s flames. Enough of these visions, and Maou begins to wonder after all if such a thing might exist. Wishing upon it would still be the height of folly, but if it’s as powerful as it is in her dreams, it might still be enough to give her the world.

All this is still uncertain speculation. What’s real, tangible— the enemy stronghold, still refusing to surrender. Maou had ordered her soldiers to put their fields to the torch, but the harvest had occurred a week before she’d arrived on the shores of Shikoku. Now, they’re at an impasse, and Maou’s patience has worn thin.

Her mind retraces its idle steps. The charcoal winks at her by the lamplight. Her lip curls, and a frustrated sigh draws Majin’s attention from across the tent. Maou’s favorite tea whisk is set cautiously aside. Golden eyes simmer with wary curiosity. Maou pays her no mind— she’s concerned with greater stakes. She’d allowed herself to lose sight of what’s in front of her. The mainland of Japan hadn’t been secured by chasing after myths, but by fire.

“I’m going out.” Maou turns sharply towards the mouth of the tent. The solution to this problem is so evident that Maou wonders why she hadn’t just done it already. With the Oda army blocking off every other line of escape and a mountain to their backs, the soldiers holed up in the castle won’t have anywhere to retreat.

“Where are you going?”

Maou catches Majin’s eyes dart from her to the futon and back. She’d been hoping to get some sleep, then. An odd thing about the Devil Saber: she seems incapable, or at least hesitant, to fall asleep by herself. What she prefers is her head in Maou’s lap, or Maou’s arms around her.

“I’ll be back soon.” Outside, a shifting of the wind, blowing in the tent flaps. On it, the faint scent of ash and embers. Maou’s eyes glow like coals, reflecting the scattering of lanterns strewn around her tent. All this, Majin takes in with the swiftness of a single breath. When the next one comes, she’s already on her feet. Her blade arcs into existence with a faint shower of sparks. From the tea hearth to the mouth of the tent in only an instant: the deadliness of the Devil Saber that, until now, has lain placidly dormant in the Demon King’s company.

“What’s this?” Maou arches an eyebrow. One hand settles on her hips, the other dangling at her side. Majin’s weapon alone is no longer a threat.

“You’re going to burn them.” Majin draws the hilt of her oodachi over one shoulder, ready to thrust. The weight of the blade angles it slightly upward as it settles in her palms. This close and motionless, it’s easy to notice where it points. The tip of the sword aims straight for Maou’s heart: even this blade was forged with one purpose in mind.

“And what if I am?” The lanterns flare in unison. Maou’s shadow lunges out at Majin’s, into the night air, settles back into its normal form. “Will you try to stop me?”

“I won’t let you.”

“Why not? If it was burning things the World disapproves of, it would’ve sent you far sooner than it did.”

“If you try, I’ll have to kill you.”

There’s no hesitation in Majin’s voice, nor in her stance. The Devil Saber, the World’s chosen assassin, stands prepared to fulfill her duty. Only her gaze betrays the plea that does not leave her lips. Perhaps Majin doesn’t even recognize what she’s asking of Maou. All she can do is stand in the Demon King’s path, sword drawn, begging the mercy of two equally immutable forces. The World will not stand to let Ichinomiya Castle burn, and the Demon King cedes the object of her desire to no one.

Laughter rumbles deep in Maou’s throat. “Is that so?” she says, baring her teeth. They shine with the mirror image of the firelight that dances on Majin’s blade. “I wondered when this might happen. Go on, then. If that’s what you want, I won’t stop you.”

It would be so simple. A single step, and the Demon King would be no more. The anguish of indecision works its way through Majin, a full-body shudder. Her fingers loosen around her oodachi, and it falls to the floor with a clatter. Majin swipes helplessly at her eyes, streaks of dark crimson seeping wider into the fabric covering the backs of her hands. In an instant, the Devil Saber is gone. What’s left is Majin, staring with blurred vision at the strange wetness coating her fingers. Quickly, she ducks her head to conceal herself from Maou. It won’t do to show weakness in front of the Demon King.

Yet it’s not the Demon King who approaches Majin, but Maou. She takes Majin up in her arms, rubs the top of her head soothingly. She asks for no explanation, simply waits. There are no thoughts of campaign strategy or enemy castles. The world that Maou wants unified under her has taken the form of a single, trembling swordsman. She clings to Maou’s cloak, the only safe refuge offered to her.

For once, Majin knows exactly what it is she wants. She just can’t say it; she’s afraid to. She’s a hair’s-breadth away from slipping the bonds the World has laid upon her, only a hope and her faith in Maou to catch her. Perhaps, then, that’s why Maou is holding her. If she’d been so prepared for Majin to kill her, then surely nothing Majin could say would faze her.

Majin turns her head to the side, watches one of the lanterns sway with the currents of air circling the tent. That’s her, ephemeral; alive for but a single purpose, and then gone and forgotten. Maou sustains these flames, and Majin like them. That’s what she wants, to live— it comes out as, “I don’t want to kill you.”

Maou nods and runs her fingers down Majin’s hair, stopping at the ribbon at the base of her neck. She’s grown her hair out in defiance of whatever template she’d been based on, something that Maou reminds her of with her patient caress.

“Once I kill you, I’ll disappear,” Majin whispers into her armor. “I don’t want to disappear, I want to keep living, I want to see more—”

“Then live.”

“But I have to kill you. That’s what my instinct keeps telling me. It’s been getting louder.” Her fingers twist against Maou’s shoulders. No longer does Majin hold her tears back; she cries freely while Maou rubs her back, losing herself in the familiarity of Maou’s touch. “Even if I ignore it, I still feel it. When we’re together, when you’re sleeping…”

“I understand.” Majin nods; that’s all she could’ve asked for. But Maou keeps going: “If that’s the case, then I’ll find a way to free you of the World. I mean, I’ve already beaten death, right? What’s something like the World compared to that?”

In spite of herself, Majin giggles. Of course that would be the Demon King’s response. Maou smiles too, and with a gentle press of her lips to the crown of Majin’s head, untangles herself from the Devil Saber’s arms and returns to her table. A few swipes of her fingers smear the previous markings from the map. She hunches over them, scrutiny in each meticulous new stroke placed along old battle lines.

Wiping her eyes one last time, Majin joins her. “What are you doing now?”

“The river will freeze over once it get cold enough,” Maou says. “It’s best to get my men used to patrolling the area before it does.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You want to live, I need to find a way to make that happen. I’m buying us a little time. Unless you’d rather me set the castle on fire right now?”

Maou grins as she says this, and yet she can’t miss the very visible recoil of Majin’s shoulders, the reflexive clenching of her fingers. She says, her voice softer, “I’ve asked you what you want all this time, haven’t I? What kind of person would I be if I refused your most important request?”

“Oh.” Majin shuffles closer, winding her arms around the one Maou is bracing herself against the table with. She huddles against Maou as if it’s warmth she wants, but she’s fine. She’s got her scarf and her coat, so what else could she want? Unbeknownst to her, her eyes gaze imploringly, nervously, up at Maou. Time passes not in seconds, but in staccato bursts of her heartbeat in her ears.

Majin wants something. She wants it as badly as she wants to live. Maou senses this, and turns to her, patiently waiting for Majin to say what it is.

A hint of remaining moisture beads at the corners of Majin’s eyes. Majin makes no effort to wipe it away. She’s too tired. It’s like her tears took all her energy as they escaped, and she’s left bare, painfully so. This is the true terror of the Demon King, Majin realizes. Not the inferno that consumes all in her path, but the determined flame that ignites that firestorm, sucking all the air from Majin’s lungs. She’s too close; she’ll get burned, and that’s what she wants. To be as unburdened as the Demon King is still only a dream, but a tangible one.

Wordlessly, Majin reaches for it.

Maou’s hair trembles between her fingers. Their mouths meet, chastely at first. A ravenous spark leaps between them, and Maou throws down her charcoal. She’s upon Majin with the same attentiveness she’d given the map, fingers gliding over exposed skin, one hand on Majin’s waist to hold them both steady. Too long has Maou hungered for another woman. She wants to devour Majin whole, but she must savor this. The lingering sweetness of dango and the smoky fumes from the tea hearth suffuse their kiss. All of Majin’s wants are here, distilled, for one perfect moment. Without separating, Maou shifts to put the table at her back. Majin leans into her, taking with pliant lips whatever Maou will give her.

Maou gives her everything.

The moment stretches, unbroken, until dawn.

* * *

Fingers of snow creep southward toward Shikoku. Maou’s desk grows heavy with reports from her northernmost generals. Hideyoshi says his campaign is nearly done, and he’ll march to reinforce Maou immediately. He hopes to arrive near the next change of the seasons, but until then, Maou must make do on her own.

For now, Maou waits. She’s had her couriers scour the libraries of the castles she’d taken; their contents rise in a stack from her desk and trail over the sides. She pores over their contents with Majin’s head in her lap, fingers leaving the Devil Saber’s hair only to adjust the scrolls she’s reading.

From them, Maou learns the nature of what she’s looking for. The artifact, should she find it, will have the shape of a cup. Some texts describe it as being wrought of gold; others, that it’s merely gilded with precious metals. Maou notes all of this down on a separate scroll with deliberate brush strokes. Her kanji are beautiful, and yet they fill Majin with unease. With each new fragment of information that Maou obtains, that feeling grows increasingly stronger. It nests, unwanted, in her chest beside her heart. She knows it to be a command from the World itself: the Demon King is not meant to lay her hands on the Grail.

And then, like her campaign, Maou’s research stalls. The scrolls she searches through tell her nothing. She settles for patrolling the front lines with Majin at her side, gazing thoughtfully up at the castle’s stone walls. Nothing and no one has entered or left the fortress town since she surrounded it. They’ll have to give in soon, but as the weeks stretch on, those words are uttered less and less, becoming only a wishful reality.

As Maou’s siege approaches its second month, the snow arrives at last.

Nothing heralds its arrival. It’s simply there one morning, a thick layer of it over the ground, sending Majin burrowing into the covers. The only thing that rouses her is Maou preparing to leave the tent, saying she’ll need to check the status of the camp now that the snow has come. That gets her reaching for her coat, fumbling with it as she tails Maou out of the tent.

(Something that Maou has noticed, but not Majin: they’re hardly ever apart now. Where Maou goes, Majin follows. She’s become a fixture of Maou’s life as much as the World is a part of hers.)

They emerge beneath a grey sky reflecting the world covered in white. More descends steadily from the heavens. Without a wind to carry them, the snowflakes fall in uniform lines like soldiers. Majin puts her hand out, gathering a few in her palm. They dissolve before she’s brought them to her mouth: Her tongue finds only flecks of water in her hand. Majin’s face contorts in confusion, and Maou can’t help but laugh. There’s no shortage of new things for Majin to discover, and this time, her reaction is nothing like Maou expected. For the world-weary Demon King, Majin has somehow made the mundane interesting again.

“You won’t catch any that way,” Maou tells her. Majin pauses, her tongue straining to pick up a snowflake from the edge of her scarf. She nuzzles against Maou’s palm, grazing the top of her head, and hums softly. “Just catch them on your tongue.”

Majin pulls at her scarf, exposing her lower face. Her tongue pokes out, at first only to test the chill in the air, and retracts quickly. Her scarf is yanked back into place. Again, she looks to Maou for guidance. What is the proper reaction to snowflakes landing on your nose and tongue?

Maou just laughs, low and measured. “Didn’t the World at least tell you about snow? That’s a part of it, you know!”

“I…” Majin plays with the edges of her scarf, chancing quick looks at Maou. Her hands are cold— she thinks she likes the full-finger gloves Maou always wears. That’s an easy thought. Figuring out what to say next— that requires effort. Finally: “Knowing about it and seeing it are very different experiences.”

“Ah, and I’ll bet the World never taught you this. Majin!”

Majin turns, blinks. The snowball splashes across the bridge of her nose, sending clumped fragments of ice down her neck and below her scarf. The Devil Saber squeaks, claws at her scarf, and takes a second hit: Maou, her arms training not forgotten, has gone for center mass.

“Come on!” Maou gestures with one free hand, the other holding several more snowballs. “Fight back, Devil Saber! Unless you wish to admit defeat to the Demon King?”

Majin jumps to the side, crouching to dip her hands in the snow. Maou’s next throw twists through the space she’d stood and disintegrating against a rock. Clumsily, she forms a sphere. The ice saps all the heat from her hands and asks for more. She throws it at Maou: Maou’s got plenty, she wishes she could tell it.

Maou, herself in the middle of gathering more snow, blinks as the snowball smacks against the side of her head. White crystals tangle in her red hair and melt away in the blink of an eye. “Oh?” Her smile turns feline, and she secures one knee against the ground. “Going for the head right away, I see.”

“Wait, Maou-”

Snowballs bounce off Majin’s outstretched hands, their remains flying through her splayed fingers. Maou hurls her small stockpile of ammunition, one after the other. Her laughter forms fleeting clouds like muzzle flashes in the air. Majin whines, twisting in place, numb fingers chasing scraps of ice under her clothes and shocking her skin with their coldness. Her erratic movements compose a desperate dance, and she tries to raise a hand before Maou can reach for more snow.

“I give up!”

“You don’t get to give up so easily around me! Now try this!”

It’s not a snowball that comes for Majin, but Maou herself. Their bodies collide with less force than Majin expected. Maou’s arms wrap tightly around her, and they hit the ground in unison, punching a hole through the snowdrifts. Steam curls up from them in little wisps. Maou, Majin thinks. She’s heating them up.

“You’ll have to get used to cold like this if you want to live here,” Maou tells her. “Start by wearing something other than that dress of yours.”

“But I like it.”

“Ah—” Maou shrugs, and a larger puff of steam hisses up from the ice. “Well, it can’t be helped in that case. What about those leggings?”

“I— maybe.”

“Consider it, won’t you?” Maou moves closer, her body nearly flush with Majin’s, and dips her head in an unspoken offering. Majin has grown used to this, an odd habit of Maou’s: she gives freely, even of herself, but Majin must be the one to bridge the gaps she leaves with her own acceptance.

A single kiss, and the snow is forgotten. The heat that fills Majin’s body is the heat of Maou’s mouth. Maou’s teeth worry over the familiar softness of Majin’s lips. The kiss is quick, a moment and done, but when Maou sits up, Majin is no longer cold.

“Maou?” Majin tugs at her cape, and is instead welcomed back into and lifted by Maou’s arms. “I have… been meaning to ask you something?”

“Yes? What is it?”

The question is one Majin visits every night in those brief moments between the closing of her eyes and her descent into unremarkable sleep. The cold and the snow have woken her up, but not entirely removed the lingering thoughts of the night before. Maou’s words have reminded her of it; she twists the ends of her scarf again and says, “Why did you decide to trust me?”

“Hm? What’s that mean?”

“I was sent here with one purpose, to kill you.” Perhaps the one thing that doesn’t amaze Majin with sheer novelty is this: Maou’s nod, the casual acceptance of that statement as a natural part of their intertwined existences. “But you still let me share a bed with you. You let me be close to you. Why?”

“Ah, that’s…” Maou shifts her weight onto one foot, tapping the other thoughtfully. “How would I say it easily? I think— you have an honest face, Majin. If you intended to kill me, I’d see it.”

“But I will kill you.”

“Maybe.” The backs of Maou’s fingers graze Majin’s cheek. “Someday you might decide it’s time to do that. Right now, you’re telling me I can trust you, so I will.”

Maou leans down, her lips caressing Majin’s briefly, another pleasant exchange of heat and movement.

“I’ll need to go now,” Maou says. “There’s things that have to be done— making sure the gunpowder is dry, that our supply lines can still travel. Will you come with me?”

For once, Majin’s answer is a shake of her head. She has no verbal answer: her throat is dry and inexplicably tight. Maou ruffles her hair and walks off, a departure marked by the crunch of her boots against the snow and the gentle swishing of her cape.

Her back turned to Majin, Maou is vulnerable. Maou may have read Majin’s intent in her face, but that’s impossible if she can’t see Majin. The Devil Saber’s fingers tremble; her hand, its feeling renewed, aches for a familiar weight.

Majin drops to her knees in the snow. It bites against her bare skin, lances of cold digging into her flesh like gravel. She needs more of it. Majin crawls to the nearest snowdrift, lays herself atop it. The ice compacts to accept her weight, and what doesn’t dislodges and slips beneath the fabric of her clothes. Majin pays it no mind. That’s what she wants. If the ice can temper this most recent flare of her instinct, she’ll accept it without complaint.

Maou turns a corner, and is gone from Majin’s sight. Majin’s hand settles, and with it the racing of her heart. Her raised pulse is all that remains, fluttering helplessly against the snow. The cold is draining everything away, heat and energy and thought. Majin finds this sufficient. In this glacial embrace, the perpetual clash of her own want and the World’s comes to a standstill. Everything is painfully, pleasantly numbed, except for a single thing.

Majin closes her eyes, blocking out the world. She doesn’t intend to sleep. The cold will drive her away soon enough, back into the Demon King’s tent. This moment is but a brief respite, free of the World’s compulsion and Maou’s suggestions. Majin believes it to be as empty as the sky above, and for now, she’s right. The clouds maintain their unbroken cover, rolling across the upper horizon in an endless curtain, holding back the light of the sun.

(But not all of it. Some remains to brighten the day and the place where Majin lays resting, her heart stuttering with each thought of Maou that breaks through the incomplete haze of the cold.)

* * *

The mountain castle stands open and empty. A gentle wind whistles through its vacant halls. Those who manned it wander in straggling lines back to their home villages. A pile of weapons and armor flickers with the gleam of a hundred open fires and the soldiers flitting between them. Sake flows as loosely as melted runoff from the mountains trickles along the thawing riverbanks. Winter yields to spring, and the Chosokabe to the Demon King.

Tomorrow, they’ll all begin the long march back to the capital. A throbbing headache brought on by drinking too much sake will let the men forget, temporarily, that they’ve gone soft after a whole season spent camping on a mountainside.

The soldiers’ heavy laughter runs with them through the camp, passing by Maou’s tent. They believe it to be empty. Maou was last seen at the western edge of camp, observing her spoils with her field commanders. Should anyone enter, they’ll find Majin sitting cross-legged by the tea hearth, warming her hands over the fire. Watchful golden eyes dart to the tent flaps at every shift of shadows. She wonders, as she has for so long, what keeps a curious hand from slipping through the gap through which the wind enters. Majin has thought it to be loyalty, but then she remembers the orange sky under which she’d been born.

Even if it is devotion and not fear that inhabits the hearts of the Demon King’s soldiers, there’s still one person in this camp who remains unaffected. Whoever sits in the Demon King’s tent should be Maou’s closest, most unwavering supporter. Instead, she keeps company with Majin. It’s a puzzle that Majin has only recently unraveled. After what happened at Honnouji, Maou prefers consistency to loyalty. She hasn’t forgotten Majin’s allegiance or resolve. If anything, that’s part of Majin’s appeal.

(The Demon King doesn’t need to know when Majin intends to draw her weapon, so long as she knows that it’s been promised to her.)

Nearby, a rousing chorus of song. Majin touches her fingers lightly to her forehead with a tilting of her neck. She feels a wrongness to this reality. She recalls what the Demon King had once suggested: the World wanted her dead before she could unite the country.

Majin feels no such compulsion. All she knows is the fire lapping at the undersides of her fingers like the gentle caress of Maou’s hand in hers. She dares not step out into the celebrations outside in fear that they’ll shatter this tenuous peace of hers. She might again become the formless and silent Devil Saber, a body and a sword united in one unfulfilled purpose. That above all is what she dreads: when her instinct will override her sense of being and turn her into no better than a beast blinded by the hunt.

Just outside, a pattering of footsteps. They’re familiar, if slightly changed: Maou’s stride, scraping up gravel and frozen earth. Her black glove protrudes through the tent mouth, clutching a gleaming, golden skull. The rest of her enters, swaying, a moment after. Sake swishes dangerously near the lip of the bowl set into the skull. Maou notices, and with a casual tip of her hand, raises it to her mouth. Liquid trickles past her lips and escapes towards her chin. Maou catches it with the tip of a finger, licking it from her glove with an indulgent swipe of her tongue.

Majin’s eyes are fixed upon her. They trail Maou around the tent— she sets down her cup, strips off her cape and armor, and lowers herself around Majin as if mimicking a robe, arms around her neck and crossing over her chest.

“You didn’t go out?” Maou’s voice takes on a throaty purr, the side of her head nuzzling against Majin’s cheek. “Ah, I didn’t come and get you. I’m sorry— it’s not too late for us to join the others.”

“I’m alright.” Majin looks away and misses the inquisitive frown that peers after her.

“Did you want something from me, then?” Something sweet tumbles through Majin’s senses. Fruity and sharp— the sake on Maou’s breath. “Tonight is a night for celebration. Anything you want of me, should it be in my power, I’ll grant it.”

“Even if I asked to kill you?”

“Oh—” Maou doesn’t sound shocked, only bemused. “Would you? I didn’t think the Devil Saber would be so kind as to ask her target if she’d like to be killed.”

Majin shakes her head, rolls her shoulders to try and shrug off Maou. The gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. Maou rests herself against Majin’s back and cradles the other’s cheek in her bare palm. Majin is easy to read, incapable of hiding anything, but Maou can’t discern what’s troubling her. She catches Majin’s eyes flitting downward and lifts her chin with the backs of her fingers, slides them carefully across Majin’s lips.

“Something’s troubling you. Will you tell me?”

This is the luxury that comes from not being bound to the Demon King’s service. Maou only ever asks her, never orders. Majin nearly wishes she would. The way she is now, she’d fold in an instant. She will, on her own, given enough time. Waiting for that capitulation to come in the embrace of the Demon King is its own acute kind of pain. Majin quivers, grits her teeth, twists from side to side. Maou does not speak or relent. Her head settles on Majin’s shoulder, and they wait.

What comes from Majin’s mouth are the hardest words she’s spoken. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to kill you anymore.”

“Hmm? Isn’t that a good thing, then?”

“I don’t know.” Majin lifts her hands to grasp at Maou’s. They take hers, envelop them, run along the contours of her knuckles. “I’ve never felt like this. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry so much. Nights like this one are rare, and not meant for worrying.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Is that true, or do you simply believe it to be?”

Majin turns, sudden and fluid, and buries her face in Maou’s nightshirt. She doesn’t cry— she clings, mouthing silently. The unfulfilled ache in her chest escapes her in a torrent of words she doesn’t know the shapes or meanings of. They’re simply emotions, torn loose in a whirlwind of movement, caught up in Maou’s arms as she rubs Majin’s back and plays with her hair.

A renewed wave of cheers ripples through the camp. Majin shudders, and Maou lays a kiss against her brow to still her. She’s left the roles of Commander and Demon King draped with the cloak on the chair by her table. She’s simply Maou, tending to Majin in this uncertain present, leaning down to gaze into golden eyes finally brave enough to meet hers.

“Does it really worry you that much?”

Majin’s head dips slightly. She doesn’t take her eyes off Maou. Her hands slide free of the space between them and anchor to the floor on either side of Maou. She draws herself up, and closer. So close to Maou, and no sudden impulse to kill rushes over Majin. With little flicks of her eyes, she takes in everything. A hint of a twisting scar protrudes from beneath the collar of Maou’s shirt. Her hands are likewise marked, an intricate map of burn marks and cuts. These are a conqueror’s hands, and they have no business being as gentle as Majin knows Maou can be.

“Is there anything I can do?” Another nod— “Tell me.”

Majin’s hand climbs Maou’s shoulder. Her fingertips dance lightly, hesitantly, across Maou’s cheek. The world spins through the haze in her mind. Without the World’s mandate to guide her, this is the most lost she’s ever felt. Not even the aimless wanderings that had brought her to the Demon King in Kyoto were so disorienting. All she has now is what Maou has said to her and the knowledge of what she likes. Red, oden, tangerines, fireworks, the sound of rain on Maou’s tent and running water.

Kissing Maou. Being near her.

“Anything?” Majin asks her.

“Whatever you want. Didn’t I say as much?”

Majin doubts this. She knows the Demon King would never go down without a struggle, but Maou—? She doesn’t want to think of it. Majin urges herself forward suddenly, her hand on the floor slipping from its place. Only Maou keeps her from falling, her lips capturing Majin’s. They’re sticky with sake, but the alcohol on her breath isn’t enough to overwhelm its saccharine taste. Majin nibbles it up, cants her head, asks wordlessly for more. As always, Maou obliges. A quick dip of her head, the swipe of her tongue against Majin’s. Though it’s Maou who’s been drinking, the Devil Saber’s knees go weak. A stirring of her fingers against Maou’s shoulder prompts Maou to lift her up, still wobbly on her legs, and deliver them both to the futon’s softness.

Majin reaches up before Maou has even settled, pulling on a fistful of shirt. Maou shrieks with laughter as she goes down, landing atop Majin. Rather than cloth, her hands find the subtle warmth of uncovered flesh. The hem of Majin’s dress has ridden up during her fall. Majin’s next breath is shorter, harsher. Like lightning, a realization: this is what she wants. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Demon King’s words have led to this. In this moment, Majin doesn’t care. She seeks in Maou’s eyes a mirror of the hunger that dwells in her stomach, wild and untamed, something befitting the Demon King more than the Devil Saber. It had to have originated with the Demon King. To think otherwise would be—

Majin finds no such thing. What she sees in Maou is something far more tempestuous. She surveys Majin with the same gaze that the Demon King brings to bear on the battlefront. For a terrifying moment, her instinct surges. She grips something solid, but too smooth to be the hilt of her oodachi. She’s grabbed Maou’s arm— both of them are looking at her hand; Majin knows she’s right, that her duty is inescapable, so something must be wrong. Maybe it’s her.

“Majin?”

Maou’s voice shocks Majin like cold water against her face. The world snaps back into her place. Her mind is clear for a brilliant second. The World’s impulses are replaced by the sureness of Maou’s tone. Majin takes it in as though she’s been drowning, and her name is a breath of fresh air.

“Say it again.” Majin tugs lightly on Maou’s arm. “Keep saying it.”

“Majin.” Again, her name coming off Maou’s tongue fills her chest with a sort of weightlessness. Maou bends, vanishes: her lips graze the curve of Majin’s waist. Majin yelps with surprise, twitching imperceptibly. “Majin…” Maou’s breath washes over her skin with a lingering burst of warmth. She’s smiling— genuinely, not with her jaw set, not like the leer she gives a burning field of victory. She’d look almost benign were it not for the flickering of the firelight in her eyes. Her fingers, playing in the hem of Majin’s dress, give it a playful, questioning tug.

“Please,” Majin whispers. Her shoulder blades grind back into the futon. She wants nothing more than this. She wants to close her eyes and let the Demon King rage over her like the spring storms to come.

“What do you want, Majin?” Maou undoes the ribbons holding Majin’s coat together with leisurely slowness. Only then does she lift the dress away, putting it aside. Their places are reversed. With Japan united, Maou has all the time in the world. Majin reaches for her longingly, unable to wait. Maou peels off her nightshirt and throws it aside, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She could be a sunset, all red and darkened cloud, promising a tempest to last through the night.

“Majin.” Maou catches Majin’s wrists, holds them steady, and studies the woman under her. It seems she’s hardly breathing. Every inch of her is drawn taut in anticipation. With want. With her eyes, she begs Maou to carry them off into the dawn.

Maou straddles her at the hips, bends to lower her lips to Majin’s. A little sigh of Majin’s name is devoured by an avid kiss. Maou, and not the Demon King, has wanted this. All of Japan is one thing, but the Devil Saber is something else entirely.

No— not the Devil Saber. Majin. All thoughts of duty and conflict gone, they’re left as just Majin and Maou. Two kindred souls bound by death to one another. Maou draws Majin up into her arms, kisses her name into her neck. She pulls and pushes them together until the firelight no longer peers between them. To the earth, they appear as a single, unbroken shadow. Their hands mark each arcing twist of the other’s body. A second inferno sparks in the tent, sucking their breath away, each brush of skin to skin a new ignition. A final whisper closes Majin’s eyes, and both of them are consumed: a brutal surrender of each to the other.

_ Majin. _

* * *

The interior of Azuchi Castle. The uppermost floor, overlooking the lake. This is one of the rare moments where Maou and Majin must separate. She’s gone to meet with her generals and lay out the destiny of Japan. Majin waits for her in her quarters, staring out over the open landscape.

The plum blossoms have not yet begun to come into their fullness. Only a smattering of pink blankets the shriveled forests. Majin imagines how it might look in several months. Green and pink, petals falling thicker than rain. A torrent of life flooding the streets. She wishes she’d thought to ask Maou to describe it to her.

Still, as far as things go, this isn’t the worst of ends. Majin’s seen half a year of the world more than she was supposed to. She hadn’t particularly considered how she’d want things to end. However it would go, it would involve herself and Maou. That had been enough. Now, Majin ponders her final puzzle. Would she change anything?

Again, Majin’s eyes sweep the panorama. The sun dips low over the treetops. Red light streams in lines like sticks of incense. What leaves have sprouted cling to their trees as the breeze wrestles with their stems. It’s a rare, calm day between storms. Perhaps it was fated to be tonight, then. Who knows when there’d be another day like this?

The Devil Saber calls her oodachi out in front of her. Its black sheath gleams like an ember as she tilts it and draws her blade. She lays it across her lap, blade outward, and lets the sheath dissipate. Once more, she surveys the horizon, sightlessly basking in the fading radiance of the sun.

Really, there would be no better day than this one.

Maou doesn’t return until the sun has fully set. By then, Majin’s closed the windows and settled herself beside Maou’s table. As light from the hall falls into the unlit room, her golden eyes glow with a predatory sheen. A roll of Maou’s wrist breathes life into the tea hearth and the lanterns along the walls. The shimmer in Majin’s lap materializes into the familiar shape of a sword.

All this, Maou could’ve taken in her stride. She hasn’t forgotten all this time what Majin was sent here to do. What does give her pause is what’s sitting on the table behind Majin. A golden cup turns the light of the new fires into a thousand sparkling facets. Maou doesn’t recognize it as one of hers, and it certainly can’t be Majin’s. That would mean, no matter how ridiculous it seems, that the only other explanation is true. There simply isn’t another alternative.

“Is that it?” Maou asks from the doorway. She sees Majin’s hands settle on the hilt of her oodachi, gripping it tightly. “That’s what I’ve been looking for?”

“Yes.” Majin sounds faint, almost sickly. She doesn’t look at Maou when she speaks. The pallor of her face seems more fitting for a spirit than a swordsman. “It has a name. The Holy Grail.”

“The magical artifact that can grant any wish.” Maou steps forward and shuts the door behind her. Her intent is clear. Anyone who wishes to leave the room will have to do so at the cost of the other.

Majin answers this by rising on shaky legs, oodachi held over her shoulder. “I cannot let you have it.”

“Why, I wonder?” Maou asks. Leaning forward gets Majin to grit her jaw; pacing to the side only draws her eyes. Maou navigates carefully around the edges of the room, measuring her stride. “Could it be that you know what I’d wish for?”

“I know what the World tells me,” answers Majin. Her voice is dry and cold, a holdover from winter days. “You cannot be allowed to possess it.”

“Yes,” Maou muses to herself. “The Demon King is a force of destruction and self-gratification, after all. Anything I could wish for would come at the detriment of those who occupy this world. That’s what the World’s reasoning is. Am I wrong?”

“I don’t know. I simply know what I’m told.”

“So it would seem.” Red eyes fasten on to the shimmering edge of Majin’s blade. “Do you intend to kill me now?”

“Yes.” Majin ducks her head, shifting it slightly from side to side. She’s taking shelter in a scarf she doesn’t remember leaving behind. The trembling of her mouth is clear for Maou to see. “And then I will disappear.”

“I still think that’s quite unfair, but I suppose it’s too late to debate that point now, isn’t it?” Maou shrugs, her hair swaying gently around her shoulders. “I had honestly hoped you would make your move sooner. I’m not one to be disappointed so easily, but it’s hard, knowing I’ve finally achieved my goal, but I won’t be able to see what comes next.”

“I thought you said you knew I wouldn’t kill you.” Majin tilts her head, as if trying to find an angle that doesn’t betray the presence of a wetness in her eyes.

“I did say that.” Even as she smiles, Maou’s expression is one of muted dismay, not condemnation. “I knew Majin wouldn’t kill me. Whether the Devil Saber will, that’s something only you can answer for me.”

Maou inclines her head expectantly. Majin’s fingers shift, again, on the grip of her sword. Now her palms as well as the corners of her eyes are slick.

“Before we do this, I have a question for you.” Maou dares another step forward. Majin turns, lithe and lethal, and brings the point of her oodachi up to Maou’s chest. She doesn’t strike to kill just yet. “Are you doing this because you, the Devil Saber, must kill the Demon King? Or because you, Majin, have finally seen all the things you want to?”

Majin opens her mouth, but her answer catches on the lump in her throat. She can’t force it down, nor work around it. It stays where it is, choking her, sapping the strength from her already twitching limbs.

Maou says, delicately, “I thought the entire point of us sparing each other for this long was so you would have the chance to see what life was like. I thought you came to me because you wanted to learn what it could be like to live freely.”

“You of all would know best, Demon King.” The words sound unnatural leaving her, hollow. The knot in her throat had never left. Some other entity’s words poison her lips. Ashamedly, she feels relief. If this confrontation isn’t her own, somehow it’ll provide some distance between herself and what has to happen next. “Your endeavors end in failure, and only luck saved you the last time.”

“Well, I suppose that’s true.” Maou’s apparent acceptance of Majin’s words doesn’t surprise her. That’s what Maou’s strength had always been. She isn’t afraid to recognize her failures, and here is one of the ones she considers her greatest. “Maybe I was too ambitious this time. I thought that maybe if I could convince an agent of the World to live according to what she wanted, then guiding the rest of humanity along that path would be a piece of cake! But humans are such unpredictable creatures. Even if I offered them a way to be rid of gods and Buddhas, I’m sure some of them would go running right back given the first opportunity. Well— that’s humanity for you! If you’re acting like this, then you’ve got a little of them in you too, Majin.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The words are Majin’s this time, entirely her own and spoken with a rawness she’s hard-pressed to recognize. “This is where both of our stories end. Whether I’m human or not, it won’t affect the outcome.”

“It might not matter to you, but it does to me! And it should matter to you, unless you really have given up on everything we’ve done together.” Maou angles herself to slip past Majin’s blade, moving towards the Grail. She makes it two steps before the blade whispers up against her throat, edge digging just slightly into her skin.

“Don’t,” Majin whispers. “Please.”

“Will it matter if I don’t?” asks Maou. “Doesn’t the World want me dead anyway?”

“It does, but—” And there’s that lump again, blocking her from speaking, from breathing. She can hardly make out Maou through the teary haze obscuring her vision.

“Then I won’t stop.” Maou extends her arm, stretching as far as she can reach. The very ends of her fingertips caress the top of Majin’s head. “Whether you cut me down or not is your choice. If you don’t, then I’m telling you now, you’ll be entrusting me with the Grail and its wish.”

_ Don’t_, Majin wants to say. If Maou held any ounce of true affection for her, perhaps that might be enough to get her to stop. She tries, and fails, to speak her wish into being. As before, her body betrays her. Maou’s eyes slide shut. Her hand slips off Majin’s head, onto her shoulder, and gently brushes her aside. She’s but a handful of heartbeats away from the Grail.

Majin swings her oodachi back, leveling the blade with the floor. A rising cut. That’s all it would take to end this. Maou wouldn’t feel anything. She’ll simply be given the death she escaped at Honnouji. The balance of the World would be righted.

And she would spend her final moments alone.

A wispy golden mist begins to rise from the spine of the oodachi. Impulse or instinct or not, Majin finds she can’t bring herself to strike. She would rather the World unravel her existence from the space between Maou’s arms than fade away in solitude. However long it would take her to become unmade, no matter how painful, couldn’t compare to the mere thought of the tightness in her chest haunting her until she’s undone.

Maou crosses the final steps to the table. Her fingers draw the Grail into her upraised palm. Majin’s sword disappears with a flurry of energy. She watches timidly, enviously, as Maou lifts the Grail to her lips. She murmurs something to it as she kisses it. It’s not a lover’s kiss, but simultaneously more intimate. Subtle power thrums through the air, a once-twice of it, there and gone. The Grail crumbles in Maou’s hands as it passes. It’s there, then it’s dust, then it’s nothing.

Then, a shifting. A gentle twisting of the world. There’s the void that Majin had felt once in Maou’s tent, only softer. It’s so natural that it might fit right at home in Majin’s chest, had she not recognized it.

“Maou?” Majin’s voice quivers through the air. “What did you do?”

“Nothing in particular.” Maou grins, all teeth and knowingness. “I just made a wish. The World was pretty specific with who it sent you to kill, right? Wouldn’t it suck if someone got in there and messed with all of that?”

“What did you wish for?”

“I had to think about it!” laughs Maou. “I had so many scenarios in mind. But I figured ‘erase the concept of the Demon King from the World’ was the safest option. Nothing to do with you or me, so no weird side effects. I think it worked, didn’t it?”

“I’m…” Majin presses her hands to her body, as if her new humanity might be detected by some tangible thing to be felt.

“Free? Stuck with me? Human? All of those are right. Some a little more than the others. Hey.” Maou opens her arms wide, beckoning to Majin. “Come here, won’t you? You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Majin staggers forward obligingly. Maou’s arms wrap her up, tight and warm as any scarf. Her lips grace the peak of Majin’s head. Unbidden, unaware of it, Majin begins to cry.

“What’s this?” Maou neither brushes nor kisses Majin’s tears away. She lets them run their course, as they should be allowed to. She lets them wet the front of her armor and splatter ineffectually against her greaves. She whispers soft reassurances and strokes the length of Majin’s hair. Eventually, her sobs subside. They dash themselves against the ceiling and become mere memories belonging to the room.

“Maou?” Majin speaks into the stillness forming between them. The hand against the back of her neck slows, as if in thought. “Does what you said earlier— Can I still tell you what I want?”

“Of course.”

“I…” Majin tugs at her own lip with her teeth. The silence fills with all sorts of poignant suggestions. Maou waits, as she always does. Her interest in drawing Majin’s desires out into the open far outweighs her own impatience. The air between them warms; Majin’s cheeks take on a pinkish tint. “Do you think we could kiss again?”

“What do you think?” Maou leans down, putting herself at eye level with Majin. She feels her heart skip; a quickening of hot-blooded desire. Her hands are in Maou’s mantle before there’s time to register thought. They tumble haphazardly across the floor and onto the futon. Maou pulls off her armor, Majin her cape, tossing it by chance up into the rafters.

They crash against the futon, entangling everything from limbs to breath. A wave of Maou’s hand extinguishes the lanterns, steeping them in moonlight. Each touch’s lingering ghost cascades into the next. Cut off from the world around them, they inhabit this space between darkness and sunrise. Time is woven by the steady stream of sighs and gasps that depart from Majin’s lips. Space is the movement of Maou’s body over hers and the lazy wafting of the smoke as it abandons all attempts to find a way out. Forgotten high above, flickering with the reflection of the fire remaining in the tea hearth, the sun rays of Maou’s cape preside over the rest of the room, watching its passage from perpetual dawn into the light of morning.


End file.
